The emergence of social media platforms

Running head: SPORT BUSINESS
SPORT BUSINESS
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1SPORT BUSINESS
Introduction
In this world of modernization, social and digital media is considered to be an effective medium
of communication between fans, athletes and clubs. The rising of mobile phone users as well as
social media has changed the outlook of the society, including the engagement of people in
sports. Earlier to the presence of social media platforms, the engagement of the target consumers
of the sports business was highly dependent on offline promotional techniques like campaigns,
news paper as well as through television. Direct communication of the athletes with their fans
was highly rare. However, in this age of technological advancement, more than 73 percent of the
population across the word uses popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter , Youtube and others. These social media platforms are used by sports clubs to promote
any upcoming sport events. This in turn helps them to make a huge number of target audience
aware of any program which eventually results in enhancement of consumers. Not only this,
social media platforms have made direct communication between the fans and the athletes
possible. Thus it can be said that with the emergence of social media platforms, the number of
sports fans has got increased to a commendable level. It has changed the way, fans, clubs and
athletes communicate with each other. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate the benefits as
well as challenges associated with the changing social media landscape that can be experienced
by the sports industry. In order to illustrate the answer, football has been used as an example of
sports.
Discussion and analysis
According to Buschlen, Perkins and Kiurski (2019), social media has imposed highly positive
impact on the sport industry. The number of audience in the sports industry has got increased

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drastically after the emergence of social media. First of all, social media platforms like
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have made direct communication between the fans and the
athletes much easier. For instance, with the emergence of Facebook, fans can easily reach out to
popular Korean Football players like Son Heung-min. It has become easier for people to engage
in sports, follow their favorite athletes, teams or sport clubs on social media platforms and thus
obtain live update of each and every sports event (Adamopoulos, Ghose and Todri 2018). This in
turn results in enhanced number of audiences in any sport events resulting in improved revenue
and profit margin of the organizations established in the sports industry. According to
McCormick (2018), popular social media platforms like Facebook are used by sports
organizations to improve their relationship with thee consumers. Social media platforms are
considered to be the one of the most promotional tools. Considering the fact that a huge number
of people are connected to social media platforms, organizations can approach a huge pool of
target consumers within a highly limited amount of time. In popular social media platforms,
target consumers can directly access the news and updates and communicate with the
organization with the help of massages. This direct communication not only helps the
organizations to understand the specific query as well as requirements of the consumers but also
help the same to develop an effective sports fan-organization bonding. For instance, Veer, N.,
Pawar and Kolte (2019) club represents their fans as a part of their sports family. This type of
bonding enhances the loyalty of the fans towards the sports club ensuring consumer retention.
When it comes to football, social media has become one of the most crucial ways of direct
communication between athletes, fans and club organizers.
Another major benefit of the changing media landscape on the sport industry is a more
developed relationship between the sports athletes and the fans. Social networking provides an

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opportunity to the athletes to share more about themselves, their strategies and their aspirations
than almost any other marketing medium (Bennett et al. 2019). This offers both existing and new
fans the opportunity to get to know the person they are looking up to. The more the fans get to
know about their favorite sport celebrities, the more the experience feels personal. And when
those athletes use social media to connect with their followers, their interest gets deeper. In time,
this establishes a continuing bond between the athlete as well as their fan base that will continue
for several years. Athletes are found to use social media as a medium of retaining their face base.
A good number of athletes are found to directly interact with their fans and offer behind-the-
scenes and daily live shows in order to depict that they care for their supporters. This not only
helps the athletes to retain their fans but also encourages sports enthusiasts to proceed in the path
once chosen by their idols. Fans can share their concerns associated with a specific clubs or
celebrities directly with them. Additionally, the motivational posts by the sports athletes are
found to motivate millions of sports enthusiast to overcome their hurdle and peruse their dreams.
In cases where fans have felt lack of social media presence of the athletes, the athletes have often
experienced a massive decrement in the fan base. Flannery, Harris and Kenny (2020) have
pointed out that another major reason behind sports athletes to be highly concerned about their
fan base is enhanced sale of merchandise, tickets and other products.
Rebelo (2017) has pointed out sponsorship to be a major reason behind clubs and athletes to have
an effective relationship with their fan base. Sponsorship is considered to be one of the best ways
to produce year-round, long-term revenue. But it can be difficult to obtain sponsorships, unless
clubs are looking at professional athletes. Athletes have to get plenty of exposure to win
sponsors. After all, they are responsible, although indirectly, for selling their services. As part of
a holistic sports marketing plan, social media helps athletes boost their online exposure and